Survival
by ScribeAnimal
Summary: Continuity of Government (COG) – a stark term for starting over after a holocaust the likes of which is hoped will never ever happen. This is a what-could-happen if the button was ever pressed.
1. Chapter 1

"Survival"

Author: Haruo Chikamori

E-mail: hhchikamori

Rating: M

Classification: Angst, Romance.

Spoilers: N/A

Summary: Continuity of Government (COG) – a stark term for starting over after a holocaust the likes of which is hoped will never ever happen. This is a what-could-happen if the button was ever pressed.

DISCLAIMER: The characters Harm Rabb, Jr., Sarah "Mac" Mackenzie, Meg Austin, AJ Chegwidden, et al. belong (in concept if not name) to CBS/Bellisarius. Animal and all OC characters are the property of Heather and Hugo Chikamori. No profit is being made from this story, nor is any infringement intended.

_There is nothing worth having that can be obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.__ ~ George Wald_

JAG HQ

Falls Church, VA

0730 HRS

June 2003

"_The President of the United States has been notified that US Forces in the Pacific including the US Marines and Army in Korea and Japan and US Naval Forces Pacific are being placed on DEFCON 2 after Russian nationalist forces have assembled on the Sakhalin Peninsula in preparation to invade Japan._" The ZNN war correspondent intoned solemnly looking in to the news camera. "_It is likely that the invasion of Japan will occur within the next 48 hours. The US President has stated that if the Japanese islands are attacked, that nuclear retaliatory strikes will be inevitable. Russian TV stations have been playing nationalistic television programs regarding the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 to fan the flames._"

Gasps within the confines of the JAG bullpen were audible throughout. With President Bush ordering troops to fight in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the US Forces were spread thin. The Russians (in league with the Chinese) were taking the opportunity to invade Japan. Rear Admiral (upper half) AJ Chegwidden looked morosely at the various TV screens located throughout the JAG office and muttered to himself as he turned back towards his office. Walking over to a locked safe, he pulled out a folder marked "TOP SECRET" and in smaller type was coded "Operation Pinnacle". Reading the contents of the folder, he noted that he and a few other JAG officers were selected for transport. However, Admiral Chegwidden would alter that transport order.

Pentagon.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff

Rear Admiral (upper half) Toshio "Animal" Nakamura was called over to the JCS chambers and asked to make himself ready for transport as a result of Pinnacle. "You're needed in this time of war." The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stated. "The president specifically asked for you to be selected; not just us four-stars." What else could Animal say? The JCS were going to Crow Rock, Animal was to head to Mount Storm.

NAVINTEL

"Meg, can I see you for a minute." Captain Bruce Carmichael stated as he looked into Meg's panicked eyes as she turned from the ZNN broadcast.

"Yes, sir?" she said looking quizzically at him.

"Meg…you've heard of a document named "Pinnacle"? Haven't you?" Carmichael inquired as he looked at her.

"Yes, sir." Meg stated. "It's a Continuity of Government document stating the directives to be followed to ensure that the United States Government survives a disaster."

"You're correct. You have less than three hours to pack and be on the next helo out of here to Mt. Storm. The shit is going to hit the fan soon and I want to know that you survive."

"Why me, sir?"

Captain Carmichael said softly. "You have everything to live for, Meg. That's why."

JAG HQ

Falls Church, VA

"Commanders Rabb, Nakamura and Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie, in my office, now." The JAG snapped out. When the three officers were arranged in his office, he looked at the three and stated. "Commanders, Lieutenant Colonel. You are aware of the Pinnacle document?"

"Yes, sir." Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Mackenzie stated. "That's the document that indicates who is to be preserved in the event of a nuclear war to establish continuity of government?"

"It states that the JAG can make three officer selections and 2 enlisted. I choose you three officers and I will inform the two enlisted personnel myself. As of now, you three are dismissed and make ready to pack in 3 hours to meet up with a helo to Mt. Storm." AJ said.

"Yes, sir." Harm snapped out as he locked to attention.

Mac, Harm and Lia looked at each other silently as they filed out of AJ's office for the last time.

As they waited for the helo to arrive, Harm turned to see Gunny Galindez and Yeoman Coates run with bags to meet them.

_The smart ones plan early._ Was all that ran through Harm's mind.

Mt Storm Facility

Somewhere in the Blue Mountains of Virginia.

Harm as he looked out could see several helicopters converging on the Mount Storm facility. He had heard whispers about the Mount Storm facility for COG but never really gave credence to it. Now he was seeing the facility with his own eyes as the helicopter made its final descent to the helipad. Harm, Lia and Mac were armed with their regulation side-arms as AJ had counselled them. As they saw another helo land, Mac heard Lia cry out as Animal jumped out, armed with an M-16A2 and Beretta as he ran towards them. They waited for the third helicopter to land and Harm saw a face he thought he'd never see again.

"HARM!" Meg yelled as she sprinted towards the group.

"MEG!" They met in a solid embrace, while Mac's eyebrows nearly shot up to her hairline.

"SIR!" yelled someone in black fatigues. "Let's get you to the facility! We need to go NOW!" The urgency in the man's voice was apparent. The group went at a run towards where the man was pointing. A blast door almost 10 feet thick on monster sized hydraulics pivoted out just far enough that the group could get through. "Sir. We need to take your side-arms and your rifle, sir. We'll add them to the armory."

As they went farther into the underground complex, a man who was familiar to both Animal and to Harm, grinned that familiar grin and stated. "Welcome to Mount Storm."

"CAG?! Admiral?" Harm said quizzically. In the background they could hear the resounding bang as the blast door closed behind them.

"Yes, I'm the commander of this facility." Rear Admiral Thomas Boone USN (ret.) said with a sobering look. "This was why I dropped off the face of the planet, when I retired. The JCS wanted me to headline this project. I got to select who was going to be a part of this, when the balloon went up. I hope to God, it doesn't, but it doesn't look good from this point." He said as he looked over at the group, ushering them to follow him deeper into the cavernous underground facility by means of what appeared to be a heavy duty electric golf cart.

"What's this facility rated for? Admiral." Animal said as he rotated looking up at the mountainous cavern that housed this facility.

"Admiral Nakamura, this base is rated to withstand a surface detonation with a yield of almost 2 megatons." Boone replied. "We're EMP shielded. So anything that you've brought with us in terms of telecommunications, laptops and other items will be protected." Animal winced as he remembered his camera equipment was still outside the facility but realized if they survived the holocaust that was brewing, they would be more apt to be doing other things than leisure activities.

"So if they hit us with anything larger, we might have the cavern cave in on our heads or we end up as 'baked squids'." Animal raised an eyebrow. "You're well aware of the SS-19's Mod 2 capability, right?"

"Yes, sirree, I do, sir." Boone said. "I doubt very much though that they'll throw a Mod 2 at us, the Mod 2s are targeted on our operational bases."

"Well, Boone, I hope so, because I'd hate to be wrong in this case." Animal gave him a grim look. "We'd probably only have about an eighth of a millisecond to worry though." By this time they were far into the complex and in one of the operations centers. There were plenty of people here already and the majority of them were military. "So where are the politicos?" Animal said sarcastically. "We're supposed to be supporting COG."

Admiral Boone gave a knowing grin. "That's where I differentiated between who was necessary and who wasn't. Admiral. We won't be allowing the people who got us into this mess in. Even if it takes deadly force."

"Glad you thought of me, Admiral." Animal snorted.

"Oh, you pissed me off on occasion but you're alright. Admiral." Boone replied. A soldier came up to Boone and handed him a clipboard. He nodded and signed off on the form.

"So who else is left to show up?" Harm thought to ask and then his heart sank as Boone looked at him without feeling, shaking his head.

"We're on lockdown as of now." Boone said. Switching to the exterior cameras thrown on the monitors. They saw a long convoy of vehicles heading up the road, tanks included. "These people coming now are too late." A shiver went through the officers assembled at the cold statement. "They can launch rockets at us, or try to blow our blast-doors with SADMs, but we have alternate methods of taking care of ourselves – contingencies that the government politicians haven't gotten wind of including multiple blast doors.

"So, essentially, we're having a mini-insurrection." Meg asked looking at Harm wryly.

Harm replied. "It looks like it. Not that I particularly cared for politicians one way or another."

"That'd be contemptuous words if the world wasn't going to hell in a hand basket." Boone snickered.

"Well, they can court-martial me later…if any lawyers survive." That brought a weary laugh from the beleaguered group.

JAG HQ

Falls Church, VA

"General, I can't order Mt. Storm to open up. Once they go on lockdown, they're locked down. Until they receive a cessation of orders from a sequence of individuals from high command – they know who they are – you will not get in." Admiral Chegwidden said, feeling a rush of satisfaction coming from informing the bombastic General Isaac Carruthers, United States Army, that he and his political buddies could suck sand as far as he was concerned.

"They were supposed to wait until the politicians were brought to the site before they went on lockdown." The general blustered over the phone, "There was no communication from Mount Storm that they were going on lockdown. Now I have several pissed off politicians who are thinking about bringing up SADMs to blow the blast doors in."

"Then you guys won't be able to get in period. You'd have to wait two weeks until the radiation dies down. You'd be better off at Crow Rock instead of harassing Mount Storm." AJ replied.

Next Day

ZNN Broadcast

"_Military build up in Sakhalin has reached new heights upon receipt of threats by US forces._" Stuart Dunston stood outside what appeared to be Cheyenne Mountain Complex. "_It seems as though the world is heading over the nuclear abyss without stopping. In other news, a US Navy Task Force was attacked on the high seas by a group of Chinese submarines with ship to ship missiles. A US destroyer was sunk and all Chinese submarines were destroyed. This proves to be a provocation to the Chinese who have threatened nuclear retaliation, should another one of their ships be destroyed by the US fleet._"

AJ thought to himself as he sat fingertips templed. "Well, looks like it's not going to be long now before we end up going the way of the dinosaurs." He looked over at the TV screen as he switched over to the Dodgers playing the Red Sox. The civilian populace seemed to be blissfully unaware going about their daily business. How he wished that he could be like them. It was only a matter of time.

"**So long, Mom, I'm off to drop the bomb, So don't wait up for me, But though I may roam, I'll come back to my home, Although it may be a pile of debris" ~ Tom Lehrer**

There was a knock on the door of AJ's office. "Come in…" he barked. Lieutenant Commander Bud Roberts stepped into the office. "Sir, permission to ask a question?"

"Go ahead" the admiral sighed.

"I've noticed that Commander Rabb, Commander Nakamura and Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie didn't come to work today. Are they alright?"

Admiral Chegwidden looked at his young subordinate. How could he tell him that he had to make a decision based on who lived and who would die…and that not sending him with Mac, Lia and Harm had sentenced him to die when the mushroom clouds rose. Because it seemed as though nothing would stop that now. The Russians had their hands on the buttons, and the Chinese were making their rockets ready to go at a moment's notice. But with civilian spouses and children not on the list of transportables, he wasn't able to select Bud. "Sit down, Bud." He said softly as he nodded to the lieutenant commander addressing him by his given name. "I had to make a decision." He said as he looked the officer in the face. "By the end of this week, we are going to be in a holocaust the likes of which the world has never faced before. Commanders Rabb, Nakamura and Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie were sent away to someplace where they may have a chance to survive because they did not have dependents." AJ's eyes saw Bud's face take on a countenance of horror.

"Sir. What does that mean for the rest of us?" Bud asked tremulously half not wanting to hear the answer.

AJ owed it to him to give him the answer straight. "The government has deemed us expendable."

Lieutenant Commander Bud Roberts gulped down the lump that was rising in his throat, stood up straight and said. "Sir. With your permission, I'd like to secure early…and see my wife and children."

"Yes…Commander Roberts. By all means." AJ responded, his voice hollow.

Bud got up from the chair, walking over to the door like a condemned prisoner. At the door, he paused. "Were you not on that list, sir? I would have thought the JAG…"

"Bud, I sent Commander Rabb in my place and added Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie to the list, she was not on the list of transportables." Bud's eyes opened wide at the revelation.

"Francesca?" Bud asked the admiral. Admiral Chegwidden stared out the window for a long minute before he nodded.

"Dismissed… Lieutenant Commander." …and Bud knew that was the admiral's farewell.

As the Lieutenant Commander closed the door, the admiral slumped back into his chair, put his head in his hands and said softly "Francesca…my daughter…"

Mount Storm Emergency Facility.

"I'm not leaving Lieutenant Commander Roberts, Harriet and her family out there." Harm said as Animal backed him up on the statement."

"What if the bombs start dropping before then?" Admiral Boone asked.

"I've never left them behind. I don't intend to go back on my promise now." Harm stated firmly.

Animal snapped out. "Where's a helo?"

"The one we came on is still out there on the tarmac. It's a Blackhawk. It should fit everyone. But you're not rated to fly one, Harm!" Boone looked at Harm when Animal stepped in front of Harm.

"I'll fly it. I rated on helos during my stint as CAG and I have 100+ hours in the rating."

"So what if the balloon goes up before you get back…" Boone asked.

Animal flippantly shot back over his shoulder as he grabbed some flight gear. "Then…Tom…I'll see you in hell…" was his retort. "Get me a car, I'm going to need it to get to the helipad."

Lia grabbed him by the collar. "You'd better make it back or I swear, I'm going to haunt your sorry ass for eternity…mmmph…" She was about to say something else, but Animal cut her off by lowering his lips down on her mouth and showing her just how much he loved her. Grabbing his M-16A2 and clipping his M92 Beretta to his side, he and Harm headed for the vehicle that would take them to the landing pad. They could see the Blackhawk in the distance. The blast door opened just far enough to let the vehicle out. Animal saluted Admiral Boone as he and Harm drove out the blast door.

"God Speed Harm, God Speed, Admiral." Meg said.

When they got to the helo, Animal snapped out. "Keep the radio on, on the helo. I want to know what the hell is going on and whether they're going to be dropping ICBMs on top of our heads as we're trying to locate Roberts and family."

Flipping switches, the admiral got busy warming up the engines on the Blackhawk helicopter and readying it to fly.

Somewhere in the Urals

"Yavlyayutsya li sokhrannosti na rakety na ?" Marshal Mikhail Goprov said to his Senior Colonel of Rockets. [Are all safeties on, on the rockets?]"

"Vse ustroystva zashchity , tovarishch general. [all safeties are on, Comrade General]" the Senior Colonel stated. "Mikhail Dimitryevich, is it my impression that Moscow is rather jumpy these past few weeks? Are they expecting an attack by the imperialist dark forces?"

"Who can tell, whether they are getting in their cups of vodka or whether they see things, one cannot tell." The Marshal replied as he took out a cup and poured himself his own vodka. "All I can say, Fyodor Gennadius, take three looks on your radar before you respond to any orders to launch. Then wrap yourself in a bedsheet and walk slowly to the cemetery."

Bud and Harriet Roberts Residence

Fairfax, Virginia

20 minutes after Harm and Animal took off in the helo.

Harriet was shaking "I…I…can't think, Bud…" she stuttered. "We're going to die!"

"Harriet…get the kids…We're getting out of here." Bud said firmly.

"How are we going to get out of here, Bud?!" Harriet screamed at him. "We're going to die on the road when they drop that nuke?"

"Well, we're certainly going to die here if we stay here." Bud yelled back.

"Bud. SHUT UP!" Harriet screamed back at him. "I hear something." A distinctive sound from when he was over in Iraq interrupted what he was going to scream back at his wife. It was a helo…a Blackhawk from the sounds of it. And from the sounds of it, it was landing in their back yard.

"Grab the kids!" Bud yelled as he grabbed his sidearm. "We gotta get ready to go."

An enormous hammering on the back door came as Harriet bundled the kids down the stairs. The twins were in her arms. Harm grabbed the twins from Harriet and told her to run for the helo. He brooked no argument as he shoved her towards the Blackhawk. Bud gathered his kids and ran for the helo.

"Admiral Nakamura?" Bud said as he helped his children into the helicopter then got in while Harriet was strapping in. Harm shut both sliding doors of the Blackhawk and piled into the helicopter's co-pilot seat. "Thank god…you came to save us!"

"Don't thank me yet…" Animal replied as he lifted the cyclic raising the helo. "We ain't out of the roasting pan yet…and I just heard the President decided to go to DEFCON 1. We got maybe half an hour or less to get back to Mount Storm and we're not landing at the helo pad. I'm gonna put her down outside the blast door. Animal didn't give a shit if he burnt out the engines by the time he set her down. They were within 27 minutes ICBM hit from either Russia or China. He had less than a 15 minute window to get back to Mt. Storm and get them in cover before the warheads started dropping if the Russians launched.

Mount Storm Emergency Facility

Somewhere in the Ridge Mountains

When they were over Fenton Lake, Animal heard the warning that he knew he didn't like. The KH-12 satellites detected launches from China and he knew Russia would soon follow – then all the other countries that had nuclear weapons in stockpiles. He could already see the US missiles making their ascent towards their destinations. That's when he gunned the throttle…and put the Blackhawk into a straight-line shot for the bunker entrance area. They got there with barely minutes to spare. Bellowing "Get them into the shelter." Animal didn't bother shutting the rotors down. They all exited the Blackhawk, crouching down as they cleared the still spinning rotors and sprinted for the door which was barely open just wide enough to let them all crowd in…then the shelter door shut with a bang, sealing them in. Running deeper into the facility, they hit the close button to the second set of blast doors.

When Lia saw Animal, she rushed into his arms, sobbing. Harm looked over at Mac who was holding herself tightly, wondering if she was going to come unglued. Meg looked up at Harm with eyes brimming with tears. Bud looked over at Animal as Lia released him. Bud stepped up to Animal saying quietly. "Sir…I'll be in your debt. You risked your life to come get us."

"If it goes like it might…we just might envy the dead, Lieutenant Commander." Animal replied soberly.

JAG HQ

Falls Church, VA.

"I see…" AJ stated as he "Well, I guess that's it, isn't it?"

It would be less than 10 minutes. The Chinese had launched their largest missiles with 5 MT warheads and one was heading directly towards the center of Washington DC.

He got up and poured scotch into a glass, as he thought of his daughter and his ex-wife. As he sat down to drink it, a flash lit up the corner of his office from the far distant detonation of the 5MT DongFeng ICBM's warhead. Less than a second later, the blast wave tore the entire JAG Headquarters building immolating it in a blast of its own as the gas mains ruptured and exploded. Not a single person survived from that office. In less than 10 seconds, over 250,000 people perished in the blast and over 500,000 would perish from radiation. The 800 kt Topol detonation over Dulles and another 800kt Topol detonated over Washington National-Ronald Reagan International were lost in the midst of another DongFeng 5 MT blast over Andrews AFB.

Mount Storm Emergency Facility

As they looked on in horror through the monitors of the mushroom clouds going up all over the Washington DC area, they felt what felt like an earthquake overhead and the facility shook. But there was only that one explosion. But that one explosion knocked out all the cameras in the facility and the only thing that was showing on the monitors was static.

"We were lucky that was only a Topol 800kt." Admiral Boone said quietly "If that DongFeng landed on top of us, we'd have been goners. The Chinese targeted Washington DC and dropped a 5 MT on her."

Harriet had an utter look of terror on her face. "We could have died if Admiral Nakamura and Harm hadn't saved us." She whispered softly. "We would have been on that interstate and we would have died."

"Satellites are out" Harm said. "We have absolutely no idea what's going on outside…and it's too dangerous to look out while the bombs are still falling. We have to assume that Pax River and all other military installations were hit with 5MT bombs."

Animal looked over at Boone. "So, how many people do we have here?"

"There's 50 in total including security people, officers, and family as well as doctors and maintenance people. This place was designed to fit 1,000 people in here comfortably for a period of up to 10 years. Considering that we have 50 people in here, we've got the possibility of living comfortably up to 80 years and we have stockpiled food to last that long."

Animal and the rest knew that the radioactivity of the fallout would make living in the Northern Hemisphere impossible, considering the helicopter outside was now radioactive debris.

**Remember, Mommy, I'm off to get a commie, So send me a salami, And try to smile somehow.  
I'll look for you when the war is over, An hour and a half from now!**

"Mac, are you all right…" Mac was asked by Harm who looked over at him with her eyes uncomprehending - a thousand-yard stare. "Mac, snap out of it!" Finally Boone came over, snapped a flat hand across Mac's face. That slap audible to everyone else, shocking Harm, and especially Mac who snapped out of it as anger flitted across her face.

"Welcome back, Lieutenant Colonel." Tom Boone said, raising an eyebrow. "You looked like some of the guys I met coming back from Viet Nam. That's why I slapped you. You were out of it, looked like you were going to go for the door and we can't have that."

"It was horrific." Harriet sobbed as she curled up in Bud's arms. "Just the thought that we could have been obliterated out of existence just like that. The admiral didn't make it, did he?" Bud shook his head knowing that she was referring to AJ.

"We have enough provisions to make a life of it, but we need to also consider the fact that we may have to move to alternate locations as the radioactivity dies down." Tom continued. "We stashed Blackhawks further down the tunnels and Farraday-caged them to double-protect them from EMP. We have techs who are well versed on the type and will be able to teach others to help maintenance the helos."

Considering the 800kt warhead on the Topol-M SS-27 had knocked out the exterior cameras (pretty much had melted and vaporized them) Mount Storm was effectively blind and cut-off from the rest of what remained of the world. Satellites were knocked out as was everything else. There would be no more GPS navigation. The earth had effectively been bombed back into the Stone Age…well the Iron Age, at least. There would be no communication with other survivors, if there were any. And anyone left out on the surface, was dying of radiation sickness. Social norms would be taxed to the very limits in this new world of theirs. Civilization would have to rebuild again. And the populations would all depend on how many shelters survived the impact. They could write off the White House situation room, and the Pentagon situation rooms right off the bat. The DongFengs that obliterated the Pentagon and the White House with city-destroying ferocity were 5 megatons each. If it had been a surface blast, there would be a crater 200 feet deep eliminating any one that was inside the bunker. Even an air detonation would have impacted with so much pressure that the environmental seals would have been breached and everyone inside would have slowly died of radiation poisoning. There was no way of surviving a nuclear blast of mega tonnage. There was no structure that would be able to survive such a blast at close range.

The only way that Mount Storm was able to withstand the barrage of nuclear devastation was its secrecy. There was no communication out during construction, every document related to the installation was classified to highest classification. The deliveries were made by military contractors who were sworn to secrecy with the promise that they would be one of the ones protected should the balloon go up. There was no communication with outside contractors. And the military provided security for the base and they knew exactly what was being protected – the future after annihilation.

"Admiral." Tom Boone said to Animal. "As the active highest ranking officer, I want you to be my executive officer. I'm more familiar with the facility so I will stay as the officer in command but in order to run this place for the duration of time that we're in here, I'm going to need someone to help me with it. Are you game?"

"You got it, Tom." Animal replied looking at Harm. "And I'll have Harm give me a hand."

"As the radiation dies down, we'll see survivors coming by attempting to gain access." Boone said as he pointed to his holstered sidearm. "We have the armory down this way…" He ushered all of them towards the armory to show them where it was located. "We cannot let any of them in. They will contaminate the shelter and we cannot have that. Once they have been exposed, it's pretty much a death sentence. They have to stay out."

"So repelling them will involve deadly force?" Animal asked emotionlessly.

"Yes." Boone replied with sombre finality. "If we're exposed to contamination, it will be a death sentence for us." He continued the tour of the facility which appeared to go deeper inside the mountains, showing the stockpile of food, and medicines; introducing them to the doctors and security staff, pointing out Animal to the staff who had been here longer, indicating that he was the XO of the facility now and to render him respect as well as any assistance required.

The former JAG staff and former aviators realized that survival was going to require a total mental shift – to take nothing for granted. After the tour, Tom Boone showed them their quarters in the shelter. There were bunks…but the XO and the CO had their own separated quarters. Lia and Animal moved in together as they were already married. But Harm and Gunnery Sergeant Galindez were on their own in the male quarters along with any other male staff – Gunny excused himself saying that he was going to check on the security section and take command of facility security. Mac, Meg and Jennifer Coates were in the female quarters. Bud, Harriet and their children were given a section of quarters for their family to use and an ad hoc wall was set up with shelving. The bunk rooms were designed for a lot of people so given that only 50 people were in the entire shelter; there was a lot of space to do with what was necessary to make comfortable living quarters. Considering there were 37 other people in the entire complex which was designed to hold a thousand people, there was a vast amount of space to work with.

Lia and Animal's quarters.

Lia collapsed on the bunkbed provided, they had disassembled the bunk bed and made it a standard bed side by side; pushing the mattresses together. "We have a water reclamation plant, but I think we're still going to have to ration water." Animal said partly to Lia, partly to himself as they made themselves ready for bed. It had been a long day…having survived a nuclear war.

Already their thinking had changed from what would have been considered normal behaviour to "no-holds barred" thinking which meant "their survival was upper-most in their minds". Animal would not hesitate to draw on or shoot anyone who endangered the lives of the people in their shelter.

And Lia thought to herself that she wouldn't hesitate to notify Animal who to keep an eye on if it came down to it and already she was worried about how one person would react to this whole situation. When it came down to it, she would keep an eye on a certain Marine because with the way she reacted today when the bombs fell, Lia wasn't sure of their safety around her. She had lost faith in the formerly stalwart Marine and it was going to take a hell of a lot to get it back.

"Did you see Mac's face when we got hit with the 800 kt warhead? It looked as if she was going to run for the door and open it." Lia stated on the pretext of starting a conversation.

"What do you mean?" Animal asked.

"I think she's terrified." Lia said, her eyes locking on Animal. "And she may be one of the first to crack. She wanted out of the situation and she didn't care if she took all of us with her."

"Mmmhmmm." Animal nodded quietly. He didn't like what he was hearing, but he had seen it with his own eyes: Mac's thousand-yard stare – the fact that Boone had to slap her to bring her back to her senses. The sheer terror in her eyes when the 800kt warhead detonated on the mountainside above their underground shelter.

Would he have to draw on her to bring her to her senses or cut her down if she made a move toward attempting to open the blast shelter doors. He hoped for Mac's sake that she had made note of Tom Boone's stark comment of the use of deadly force to protect the shelter occupants and whether she realized it or not, it meant the possibility of using deadly force against shelter occupants who endangered the lives of those who sheltered within the underground facility. Survival made for hard choices. He thought to himself that it could potentially come down to Harm having to do the same thing when he was on watch.

As of now, though she didn't know it, Mac was living on borrowed time if she didn't make that necessary mental shift to survival mode.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: _Just wanted to warn people that the description of the surface conditions of the earth after the nuclear war will be rather jarring. The earth will not be a pleasant place after a nuclear conflict. People will die; friends and family and the survivors will have to make a hard choice – to go on without them or to join them. There will be uncomfortable social norm situations created by a nuclear war that would be unthinkable in a non-survival situation of that magnitude. Some of the social situations in this story will be very uncomfortable. _

"_The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma._" ― _Judith Lewis Herman_

/"Everything is normal as can be, Sarah"… why was Clayton Webb's voice ringing so eerily. Mac thought to herself. "We can go to the beach house…and be safe." He extended a hand out to her as Mac walked towards him…a mushroom cloud went up far in the distance…and Clay…melted, pools of flesh coming off his body, a skeleton being exposed…as the blast effects blew his entire skeleton apart and Mac felt herself lift off the ground and a burning sensation came up from the pit of her stomach./

She screamed as she hit the ground (she had fallen from her bed in her terror)…opening her eyes and seeing the worried faces of Meg Austin and Jennifer Coates as she looked up, sheer terror in her eyes.

"You're all right now…" Meg said calmly. She realized what it was that Mac was going through. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. "Mac, you need to come to grips with the fact that we went through something no one thought would ever happen."

"H-h-how are you managing to cope?" Mac stuttered, shivering so violently that it seemed like her muscles were spasming painfully.

"I think a lot of us just blocked the situation out of our minds. We're stuck in here for the next, I don't know how long." Jen said "The world as we know it is no longer around, people that we know have perished, but we're still alive and we have to stay alive."

"What if we're all that's left?" Mac asked plaintively. It seemed as though bad things were only happening to her.

"Well, there's fifty of us in this vault…and not all of us knew about all the different vault systems that were available for continuity of government." Meg replied. Her naval intelligence background was coming to the fore as she tried to reassure Mac that they could get through this. And in doing so, reduced the amount of doubt in her own mind. They would have to pull together and survive and if they were able to have made it to this shelter, they would survive, no matter how harsh of conditions the outside world would have become. "Mac, understand this…we're all in this together. We have to tough it out."

"What is there to live for?" Tears spilled from Mac's eyes. She hated this – this weakness. She was supposed to be this tough United States Marine but she was terrified. They had nearly died. If Admiral Chegwidden had doubted even for a second that this nuclear exchange was going to happen, they all would have been incinerated in nuclear hellfire. As it was, it was Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden's foresight that sent them all to Mount Storm. And it was Animal and Harm's heroism that brought Bud, Harriet and their family to the Mount Storm Vault or they would have been mourning the loss of their closest friends, lost in the detonation of a 5 MT nuclear weapon. The unfairness of it all came pouring out of her in a bitter tide. She had undergone brutal abuse at the hands of her father Joe Mackenzie and with the help of her Uncle Matt she had beat that. She had been drawn up on charges of fraternization with a superior and beat that. She almost went down for murder, but beat that charge as well. Her fling with Commander Mic Brumby and almost-marriage floundered because she couldn't stop vascillating between Harm and Mic and now most certainly Mic Brumby was radioactively char-broiled by a missile from China. And if Australia was most certainly charred from nuclear missiles, then Fort Leavenworth, Kansas would be completely obliterated off the face of the planet. Her heart heaved as she silently mourned for Uncle Matt and for someone she considered as close as a surrogate father – who saved her to the last, Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden.

"We can't lose hope." Jen said. "That's all we have left…" They seemed to instinctively know after this disaster, there was no military left; there were no ranks – there was only each other and each one of them knew it. The only hierarchy there was left was the base commander who was Tom Boone and the vice-commander who was Animal but everybody else was equal.

"We're cut off from everybody." That was a fact that no-one could refute and it left them silent wondering if they were the only ones left in this world.

_**Cheyenne Mountain Complex**_

_**Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming. **_

_**Office Commanding Officer, **_

_**North American Aerospace Defense Command**_

"General Stafford, the attack has destroyed every single city of strategic importance off the face of the earth " Colonel Shawn Hanson, Royal Canadian Air Force stated quietly. General Richard Stafford, USAF General, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command shook his head in disbelief. "The attack destroyed 60% of our retaliatory capability and we have committed those to the attack which has already commenced on Soviet and Chinese soil. General David Horner Jr., commander Space Command looked over at Col. Hanson and grunted, "We'll be sitting ducks when the Soviets retaliate with their backup SS-18 Mod 1s. They've got 20MT warheads and the White House never determined if the Soviets said did what they said they did." Horner growled with regards to the White House-Kremlin nuclear disarmament treaties that were negotiated in 1991. "They may have took them off-line, but held them in reserve. Lugar may have witnessed one SS-18 destruction, but I doubt they destroyed them all. So what do you think we'll be in when they reactivate them?"

"A world of shit!" General Stafford swore. "Backup communications VLF? Any of the other Vaults have command and control?"

"Correct, sir." Colonel Hanson replied. "But essentially, they've cut our head off, because Command and Control is controlled under UHF. With the EMP blast, it's going to take weeks to get the system online. All we can hope for is VLF transmission to the sites and hope that they use their initiative if their control hasn't been taken off-line."

"We have stocked most shelters with CDV-700 Geiger Counters so that people will be able to venture out after six weeks to see how far the rads have come down." Colonel Mitscher stated. Colonel Kevin Mitscher was a CBRN specialist with a group of about 50 people who specialized in treating victims of and prepping for defence against Chemical, Biological, Radiologic and Nuclear situations.

"_In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine." ― __Erwin Rommel_

If someone was still around to be able to see the surface of the earth, it would have resembled the surface of an over-baked pie; an absolutely alien surface covered in little dots of open flame. Smoke deadly and radioactive swirled around the surface of what used to be dotted with trees. Every so often a piece of damaged building would crack and fall off of what remained of the structure. Fires raged throughout the cities unchecked as the emergency services were either vaporized or were dying casualties themselves. The detonation of multiple warheads had made the surface of the earth practically unliveable at least for the next 80 years. Periodic tornadic whirlwinds scoured the earth's surface spawned by the fires and the climate change caused by multiple nuclear detonations.

Large amounts of dust were kicked up by the blasts thrown up into the atmosphere and were now circling the earth in the form of radioactive clouds. Looking down a street one could see the charred lumps of blackened suet in human form, what clothes the people were garbed in had burned off, a figure, similarly a hunk of blackened meat, lay over the hood of a twisted mound barely recognizable as a car. The sign sat in a heap, blown off by winds generated by the force of the multiple five megaton blasts detonated over Dulles International Airport. If one could turn the sign over, they would have read the sign as "JAG Headquarters". Looking closer at one of the charred figures, the viewer would have seen that the figure held a twisted metal frame. The glass of the frame had melted onto the charred edges of a picture, inadvertently protecting it, which barely burned even in the incredible heat of several 5MT blasts and the resultant explosion of the gas furnace that powered the JAG HQ, a portrait of what was recognizable as a dark-haired woman would be seen.

Andrews Air Force Base was an unrecognizable crater two hundred and fifty feet deep thanks to 3 five megaton detonations centered on the base itself, two of the warheads set for surface detonation to take out the runways. The clouds had coalesced into an impenetrable layer from which no sunlight could get through and the roentgen equivalent man (rem) count soared – anything still left alive was sentenced to a slow death from radiation sickness.

"_What a curious picture it is to find man, __homo sapiens__, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles." ~ J William Fulbright. _

_**Mount Storm Complex**_

_**Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains**_

"Admiral…" Tom Boone grinned as he looked over at Animal and Harm "Wanted to show you something that might brighten your day." He pointed to an elevator "Twenty years of technology went into this complex. It's even more expansive than the Cheyenne Mountain complex. As you know, the mountains that this complex is located in are large. In twenty years, we've had time enough to expand this complex into something that the Russians couldn't even begin to think possible." The elevators closed on the three of them and the elevator began its descent. "This complex is rated hardened enough to take the blast of the Tsar Bomba that they planned not just the one they detonated! Frankly it puts the Air Force's Cheyenne Mountain to shame. We put several sections on this facility – each able to withstand a five megaton blast and we can section off areas so that if they're damaged, we just cut them off completely. The food and other storage are located in the section which can withstand a hundred megaton blast so we'll never risk our food supply. But what we have here, for when we need to escape this area is this:" he said as the elevator door opened onto a large underground facility lit up by banks of cold LEDs that were behind Fresnel lenses that projected a large amount of light onto the floor of the facility. Animal looked over the complex which was a wide open flat area. Parked on the flat area were six F/A-18s and 2 F-14Ds as well as six Blackhawk helicopters. CAG grinned back at Animal whose jaw was practically on the floor. "The whole facility roof is anchored to the mountain.

"Tell me you have helo and aircraft simulators to keep up flight hours and to train other potential pilots" Harm and Animal said simultaneously.

"Already done." Boone said. "We need to train more pilots who will be able to fly these aircraft just in case we have to do a rapid evacuation of this facility. The blast doors that seal off the underground airfield from the outside cost two point six billion dollars each designed to withstand overpressures of 100 psi – which means they won't get blown in by a nuke ten times as big as the projected Tsar Bomba. The blast doors will slide apart in just under 30 seconds, so that the aircraft can be airborne inside of two minutes." Animal looked down the mountain complex – it disappeared into the distance - and then looked back at Tom Boone who nodded in affirmative, "The entirety of the runway is underground." He confirmed. "We have ducts and fans to enable the exhaust from the aircraft during run-up tests and take-off and landing to be shuttled from the airfield chamber to the green chamber where we keep our trees and organics to be able to convert the exhaust carbon dioxide to oxygen and that way we re-circulate our air. Helps out the air circulation system so that it isn't overloaded if the greenery takes part of the workload off the ACS."

"Armory?" Harm asked.

"Yes, you realize how much the arms budget was? Some of it was diverted in here." Boone replied.

"Specials?" Animal asked not really wanting to hear the answer. After the nuclear devastation that was visited on the surface, he didn't want to really have to drop one to protect the facility. The F/A-18C was B-83 certified.

"We have 27 B-83s in the special weapons locker. We have an armed guard contingent and the only two people who have access to that would be you…and me." Boone pointed at Animal specifically and then back at himself "So far it appears that we have the only operational nukes left. Unless they stored some in other Vaults too and even if they did, they don't have a functional delivery system. The intercontinental ballistic missiles are all gone and we have, as far as we know, the only functional airfield for miles around. "

The B-83 was one of the smaller nuclear weapons that were rated to be dropped from fighter-bombers but make no mistake, it wasn't a light-weight as far as yield was concerned. The top dial-a-yield for a B-83 was one point two megatons which could impact a severe amount of damage to any potential city-target.

Boone looked at him casually as he said. "It was classified till now, but the F-14s can carry the B-83 too. They were certified prior to the Gulf War. They kept that fact secret to you aviators just so the enemy wouldn't catch wind of it." Animal snorted in response but kept silent.

Harm pondered the sense of having nuclear weapons still left in the special weapons bunker, but a situation like this called for making sure of the safety of their little community. If any attackers (left alive) were to locate an nuclear ammo dump that hadn't been vaporized and become nuclear armed or a hostile Vault stocked with SADMs (Small Atomic Demolition Munitions) were to come across their little community, it would be met with lethal force. Far be it from the Mount Storm survivors to want to nuke other survivors, however if the intruders had hostile intent, it would be necessary to eliminate them with due prejudice. Would he be able to reconcile the "defensive" actions with the result: more scorched and irradiated earth?

They looked at the underground airfield which Animal thought was a crowning achievement. Enormous in its size with a single active runway as well as plenty of tarmac for the few aircraft that they had as well as buildings and a control tower built into the mountain structure to be able to overlook the airfield. Animal could barely fathom the work that had to have taken place in order to create this section of mountain. How much blasting, how much shoring up the mountain had to have to keep from collapsing in on itself.

_So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force. ~ __Daisaku Ikeda _

_**Cheyenne Mountain Complex**_

_**Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming. **_

_**Office Commanding Officer, **_

_**North American Aerospace Defense Command**_

"So…" General Stafford said. "Can we contact Vaults 1 thru 16?" Vaults were the term for the sixteen bunkers that were built to withstand nuclear attack and were top secret to keep the enemy from learning of their locations. They were just numbered because they were military bunkers primarily built to hold members of the military. The Vaults was scattered throughout the country. Vaults 1-7 were located on the East Coast. Vaults 8 through 12 were located on the West Coast. 13-16 were located in Mid-West. There were also civilian and government bunkers, but the military was not privy to that information.

"Yes, sir. The communication will take some time though considering that we are using VLF transmission rather than UHF communication." Colonel Mitscher replied. "Mt. Storm is not responding. It could be that they have been destroyed or they could not have their equipment working yet."

"It looks as though a detonation occurred at that location during the course of the attack and considering how much it was hardened, the nuke could have destroyed the site." Stafford responded. "Keep hailing them and see if they respond."

"Crow Rock has responded. They withstood a 5 MT blast and are staying put for now. They probably won't be heading outside for at least four weeks until the radiation dies down." Col. Mitscher replied.

"What about Denver?" Stafford asked.

"Denver Airport has been obliterated by six DongFeng missiles and there are reports that the bunker itself has been destroyed." The Denver Bunker was a civilian/military bunker and it was reputed to have been hardened to stop five megaton blasts, but the overpressure caused by six missiles at maximum yield detonating simultaneously spaced one mile apart had obliterated the airport in a blast wave so intense that it caused a crater that was 300 feet deep and six miles wide.

General Stafford had heard about the conspiracy theories regarding Denver Airport and had snickered at the theorists who persisted futilely as they were thought as crackpots or militia-right wing anarchists who had a few screws loose. Most people dismissed them – however in every lie some grain of truth exists. In this case, the theorists hadn't known just how close they were to uncovering the truth.

_**Freedom Bunker**_

_**Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains **_

Billy wasn't a happy camper. When he caught wind of the fact that he heard about the rising tensions between Russia and the United States, he was already at his bunker. It was just a matter of getting the rest of the boys there. The bunker was fully stocked – he and his wife Rachel had made sure of that. If the balloon went up, he was absolutely certain that he wasn't going to be stuck outside. So when the news got tense, he and his wife and kids had made their way up to the bunker and had hunkered in. By and by, his buddies had made their way up to the bunker too, each survivalist knowing that they needed to be out of the target area and well upwind of the target area.

Each survivalist knew exactly how to keep an eye on the wind direction and speed. They knew how to deal with radiological poisoning, stocking iodine tablets, water purification procedures and other survival tips and tricks. They were all card-carrying militia group members that knew their weapons and knew how to use them.

Billy and a few of his friends had bought into the prepper lifestyle years ago and the large cavernous bunker that they had was the product of their ingenuity. Excavating an established mine into a usable bunker was a task that had taken the better part of a decade and a half but finishing it up and fitting it with a cast iron 2 foot thick blast door that had to be set on custom-made hinges and manually moved was a feat of hill-billy engineering that they still were proud of. A second set of iron blastdoors were placed strategically after a few zigzags (that were built in already to the mine-shaft prevented an incursion of radiation from entering the shelter. After all, the government wasn't going to help them out at this time. And Billy wasn't about to ask for help either – not from the government. You couldn't trust anyone from the government. If the government showed up, it was to take their belongings by force and leave them out in the cold. When they knew that war was imminent, Billy, Rachel and the rest of the prepper families had _bugged out_ to their bunker and holed up, shutting the door to the outside world. They had no connections with the outside world, but they knew instinctively that the balloon had gone up.

There were a grand total of seven families with all their kids at the bunker – all had the same belief system – that God was their ultimate judge and the government was an interloper against the rightful decrees of the Almighty. Most outsiders would have deemed their beliefs fanatical. But to Billy, it was just the way he was raised – get up in the mornin', work hard for a livin' and trust in the Lord God Almighty that He will provide. And when the holocaust happened, that he would pray to the Lord that the righteous survive and that they would provide a new foundation for this world to survive and prosper according to God'.

But being stuck in what amounted to a glorified hole in the ground bereft of the creature comforts of home would be enough to drive any sane person stark ravin', foaming at the mouth looney-tunes. And Timmy was part of the way there, sitting there in a chair mumbling to himself, cleanin' his shotguns and saying how anybody tried to break into the bunker was going to get a full face-load of double-ought. But then again, Timmy had served in 'Nam and he was a tunnel-rat. Frankly to be a tunnel-rat one had to be half-off their rocker to begin with. Tunnel rats were expected to go clear out Viet Cong tunnels armed only with a flashlight, a fighting knife and a .45. Timmy was in his late 50s, the hardened, ex-military grandpa of the bunch but this last "war" had nearly sent him around the bend. Because this was a war he couldn't understand – the war he had fought was hand-to-hand, seeing the face of the enemy that you were killing as you shoved your combat knife between his third and fourth ribs angled upwards to make a clean puncture of the aorta. This one was a faceless war – you pushed a button and ten million people died. It was clean, detached almost antiseptic in its brutality and it was something of he couldn't make sense. That pushed his emotional equilibrium completely off-balance.

"_Monogamy is the least of the taboos which nuclear war demolishes" ~ Paul Brians - .edu/~ _

_**Mount Storm Complex**_

_**Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains**_

Tom Boone, Animal and Harm headed back up to the upper levels of the Mt. Storm complex. Looking over at the other two, Tom Boone said. "This has been a hell of a situation that we find ourselves in." Stepping into a conference room, he pulled up a chair and sat down, motioning the other two to sit as well. "We are perhaps one of the very few people to survive this holocaust. Our main goal is survival – nothing else." He rested his elbow on the armrest of the chair that he was sitting in, using his index and middle finger to massage his temple as he pondered carefully his next words. "Social norms are an artifical construct." Animal and Harm looked at each other with a carefully guarded expression as Tom continued. "We all knew that social norms such as killing someone or stealing vital resources would fly out the window in the face of a nuclear war. You might be very uncomfortable with what I have to say here. We have fifty people in total in here. Some of you are already paired up. But it is essential that we have a new generation to run this complex." Animal and Harm started to look more and more uncomfortable in their chairs. "What I'm asking in real life would have been showing a red flag to a bull under more normal circumstances as red-blooded males, however we have all been through hell in the past 48 hours – you're probably all reeling, but I'm going to have to put it to you straight." Tom had always been a straight-shooter, Harm realized with dismay. "You males and the females in this complex are going to have to repopulate this planet. And that pretty much blows the concept of monogamy out the window."

"Are you nuts?!" Animal was the first to stand up. "You do realize that Lia and I have been married for 10 years?" Animal didn't like the thought of it – if anything he was absolutely faithful to his wife and had been no matter whether he was on deployment or not.

"Animal, concept number one. Established fact – genetic diversity allows survival." Tom replied, not rising to Animal's angered reply. "And to that end, monogamy has to end...to allow our survival as a species."

"So you're telling me that I have to tell Lia that our marriage has to be dissolved, so I can go copulate with some female that I don't have any clue of in order to ensure the continuation of our species?! FUCK!" Animal pushed the chair aside, and paced the room – Tom could see the steam coming off Animal as he pondered the unthinkable. Whirling around, Animal snapped angrily. "Oh, that's rich, Tom. What the hell happened to _for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…till death do us part?_ Am I supposed to forsake those vows I took to Lia and say _Oh, Honey, I guess I have to go fuck someone else because nuclear war happened and I have to make sure that we all survive for generations to come?_"

Harm could see the opportunity, but the simple fact that pair-bonds were being disallowed was a major deterrent. But he had to defuse this situation before it got out of hand. "So, CAG…" Harm began slowly. "So what you're saying is that pair-bonds are disallowed? Sex is allowed but there can't be any emotion about it, no attachments?"

"At least not until we have a lot of children who can end up starting the next generation when they are old enough to pair bond for themselves. As of now you have to consider yourselves all single – frankly to tell you the truth, all your marriage records have been turned into radioactive ash so there is no proof of marriage." Tom replied with finality. "If you want, I can have a meeting and you can all hear it from the horse's mouth."

Animal restrained himself admirably from saying that Tom was speaking from the horse's other orifice and said quietly as he forced his anger down. "So what is this going to be? An antiseptic rotation _screw-schedule_? Person A, at 4:35-5:10 you go have a roll in the hay with Person B…?"

"Might be an idea." Tom retorted just to piss Animal off even more. "I'm sure I'll get people who are more amenable to it from the ones who are single and fancy themselves as Casanovas. However I'm sure the married ones will object, just as you are doing right now."

Animal got up. "I need to kill this meeting. I have a lot to think about right now." Animal said dourly as he walked to the door. "By your leave." He opened the door, stepped through it and closed it behind him.

"I knew he wasn't going to take it well." Tom said. "But unfortunately we have to do this or we'll only suffer down the road. We need the genetic diversity in order to be able to not have physical or mental problems down the road as a species."

"So when did you become an evolutionary biologist? CAG?" Harm asked sardonically – feeling the fact that his mentor was absolutely pissed off, having walked out of the room.

"Since I had command of this project. You wouldn't believe the shit we had to read and study in order to ensure the survival of our species in case of Doomsday." Tom retorted caustically. "I can understand Animal's anger, but we need every viable chance we can get to make damned sure we don't go the way of the dodo."

_**Lia and Animal's Compartment**_

Lia looked up at Animal in horror. "You mean he suggested that?" Animal shook his head quietly. This probably was the last time that Animal would be able to hold her the way that he had for the past ten years.

Animal said quietly. "He already came to the decision to make monogamy illegal in this complex. We have no choice but to comply. I stated my objections and couldn't make him see that there are some of us who hold our vows more solidly than our life."

"But…" Lia said. "What about our marriage. Wouldn't that be going against the social norms."

"Lia, my love." Animal reached out gathering her into his arms. "the first thing he said before he announced this was that social norms have been eliminated when the first nuclear bomb detonated. Our marriage documents are radioactive dust and that monogamy had to be abolished in order for our species to survive."

Lia looked upset, angry even. "I cherish my vows, but to think that Tom could make such light of it that he would turn around and split us apart, it pisses me off to no end." She whirled around and spat out caustically her voice dripping with sarcastic venom. "What does he expect the married folks to do? 'Oh, honey, my sweet, let's have one last fuck for old time's sake?'. This is absolute bullshit! Does he not think that the females in this complex would have something to say about that too? Does he think we're herd cattle, just here to cater to the sexual wants and desires of the men? Does he not realize that we have some desires too…like staying with the man that I chose to be my mate?"

"I don't like this either." Animal said, wondering whether Lia's anger was aimed at him (the messenger of bad news) or whether she was supremely pissed off at Tom Boone. He also wondered if he felt that he had capitulated to Tom Boone too early.

It seemed like Lia collapsed in on herself as a tear ran down her cheek. "I hate to sound like a romantic cliché, but Toshio…I need you." She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up to kiss him solidly on the mouth. She choked out a mixture of a laugh and a sob and whispered huskily to him. "Oh, honey, my sweet, let's have one last fuck for old time's sake…I want you…and if I am to help with continuing the species, I want the first baby I have to be pregnant with, to be the one that was fathered by my rightful husband."

_**Mt Storm Communications Room**_

_**Mt Storm Complex**_

_**Somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains**_

"Sir, we have communications restored." Chief Radioman Alan Mahoney stated to "And we have a message coming in from Cheyenne Mountain. They survived the attack but they're staying hunkered down and saying when they are sufficiently able to ascertain the levels of radiation – they will let us know, sir."

"What about Crow Rock?" Boone asked quietly as Harm stood beside him.

"So far nothing yet." The chief looked at him. "I will continue to check the frequencies and make sure that we make communications contact with them as soon as they get their equipment running again. Sir!"

"Drop the sir, Alan. We're no longer military – this is now a civilian base and we're no longer under the dictates of a United States of America as it ceased to exist." Tom Boone looked at the former Navy Chief. From now on we're our own governing independent state…and we'll be treated as such."

_**Lia and Animal's Compartment**_

Lia shuddered in Animal's arms as they both went over the cliff, colloquially speaking. Their joining had been almost violent in its intensity. Nipping his shoulder she ground herself on him in their desire to remember their last time together as a married couple. Collapsing limply onto her chest as she felt him empty himself, his seed rushing to her womb, she panted softly. "I love you."

"I love you too." Animal whispered in her ear as her hair fell softly over them. She eagerly fastened her mouth to his lips – still not tired yet. She was trying to ensure that there would be a growing embryo in her womb by the time they left each other and if it took multiple times to make that happen, she would do so. "You're insatiable." He said softly as he felt her reach down and massage him back to action.

_**Cheyenne Mountain Complex**_

_**Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming. **_

_**Office Commanding Officer, **_

_**North American Aerospace Defense Command**_

A radio tech rushed up to General Stafford. "Sir, we just made contact with Mount Storm."

The general looked at the dispatch quietly. "Understood. Mt. Storm is declaring independence." The general grinned at the other general and colonel. "Well…General – secession was imminent. The God's Honest Truth is that the United States of America is no longer a viable nation – it fell the day the bombs fell. We are an independent state – however we can join Mount Storm as a mutual protection coalition." The general said quietly allowing the others time to ponder his words. "We have no military, our ranks are just decorations and the only thing that we have command for is to protect a stable form of governance. The only way that we will survive is to join with Mount Storm and be a mutually beneficial coalition force for survival.

General Horner and Colonel Mitscher pondered this and came to the conclusion that this truly was their only method of survival in a situation where the nuclear weapons had obliterated any form of governmental structure. They would continue to monitor the situation that was going on and make their decisions to extend their communications feelers to any other vaults that would potentially be of mutual assistance.

Colonel Hanson pondered the situation. _Canada had been hit just as hard from the nuclear weapons. Ottawa and Toronto were gone. Vancouver was heavily damaged and the ports were destroyed. Vancouver International Airport was hit with a 5 MT Dong Feng to prevent US forces from using it as an alternate staging facility. Edmonton and Calgary were all destroyed. To put it simply - any viable city with an airport that had a runway longer than 4,000 feet was destroyed by nuclear strikes. With the obliteration of Ottawa, Canada's Capital City, there was no more Canadian Forces High Command. The National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa had been the intersection point for three Russian 800kT nuclear warheads – One centered on Parliament Hill, One directly over the National Defence Headquarters and one centered on the Government Conference Center. Each of these three detonations produced temperatures over a million degrees Fahrenheit – the blast waves sending debris from ruined buildings a mile away hurtling at hurricane force wind speeds. In a split second 1.26 million people were vaporized. Including the detonations of 1 800Kt warhead over a civilian airport with a runway over 4,000 feet long and another R12 2.3 MT warhead over Ottawa International Airport and Ottawa looked like a seething mass of radioactive clouds billowing in the air. Anything currently living there would be dying slowly of radiation poisoning. _Colonel Hanson considered himself very lucky that he was living in the protected confines of Cheyenne Mountain.

_**Lia and Animal's Compartment**_

Considering the fact that they had to conserve water, showering was a very hurried affair. Lia clung to Animal as they showered off from the carnal exertions that they had gone to great lengths to complete. Lia hoped that she had a child from the joining as that would effectively take her out of the reproduction rotation. And maybe in the interim she would find a viable alternative to broach to Tom Boone in order to facilitate the potential of pairing off in bonds.

Leaning up to kiss Animal, Lia murmured softly. "I hope we have a child…out of this. My first should be yours."

"So do I." Animal replied as he caressed Lia's bare back. Washing off entailed turning the showerhead on, getting wet, turning the showerhead off while quickly soaping up, turning the water back on then rinsing off. All water went to a waste-water reclamation plant inside the mountain to be disinfected, cleaned, deodorized and sent back into rotation for use again.

When they had gotten dressed again, Lia mentioned quietly. "So what are you going to do about the jealousy aspect of this plan."

"I'd hope that Tom Boone had thought of that." Animal replied. "Because things are going to get ugly if people develop pair-bonds even as a result of this and start getting jealous of the situation."

"You guys have it lucky. You can impregnate at will. We have to bear the children." Lia raised an eyebrow and gave him a glower. "That's nine months of having to lug around a 7 lb bowling ball and you guys get to go off and hump another woman."

"ouch…burn…" Animal winced.

"I swear to God, that I will castrate you if you decide to do the dirty with Sarah Mackenzie…" Lia shot daggers at Animal – and those daggers if they were real would have perforated him straight through.

"Heaven forbid…" Animal rolled his eyes. Sarah Mackenzie did not interest Animal in the slightest. And despite the fact that Tom Boone had said that rotations were to involve anyone and everyone in heterosexual pairs, Animal just found the thought of this whole thing as distasteful.

"I love you so much…" Lia whispered softly as she turned up those lashes and eyes at Animal in a pose that he loved so much. "This whole damned reproductive cycle that Boone proposed just makes me feel like a whore. I don't like it." There was nothing much that Animal could say either. The men got the benefit of this, being able to sow their seed far and wide and propagate the next generation of men and women who were to try to bring this barren and radiated planet back to life. What a horrendous setback for women's lib. They were back to being the child-bearers and child-raisers of yesteryear.

_**Jen, Meg and Mac's Quarters**_

"They want us to WHAT?!" Mac's voice was a shrill shriek as Harm wondered if he would have to duck to avoid sharp objects being thrown at him. "We're being turned into BREEDING CATTLE?!" Harm was sure that the female Marine had pulled out of the depressive PTSD doldrums by that statement and she was looking for a KBAR to inflict lethal damage to Tom Boone.

Meg's look was of absolute disgust at the thought that such a process of love and commitment could be turned over on its ear and turned into a process of industry – we must make babies or else the future of the world is at stake. Whoever came up with that idea should have been shot, staked and had his (it was a him…only a man could come up with an idea like that…Meg thought to herself) _bolsa que contiene los testículos_ surgically removed without aid of anaesthetic. Meg did let her mind wander. To tell the truth, there were only three men in that shelter with whom she could even think of letting them touch her in that way. She had a mind to go tell the former rear admiral and CAG where the hell he could stick his disgusting idea.

Jen had her head in her hands as she could barely wrap her mind around the fact that she like her other two room-mates were considered a baby-train. The men would fall over themselves trying to hump every elegible female in the shelter and they were split pretty evenly down the mix. Twenty six women to twenty four men. She and Harm locked eyes and when Harm looked over at her, she shrugged her shoulders. "I'm formerly a preacher's kid. You can see how much I care for this idea." Jen said softly as she looked over at Harm.

"Tom told me to go tell you. He's going to hold a meeting down on the lower levels to notify the rest of the people in the shelter about the plan." Harm replied not liking the response that he was going to get from the rest of the people in the shelter. When a group works for a long as they did on this project, it was certain that a few of them were close and that they would be pairing up in contravention of Boone's edict.

"Well…my answer is exactly this:" Harm only had a split-second warning before a shoe whistled past his left ear. Mac was glaring at him with a lethal expression that stated that he had better make himself scarce while she figured this out or he would be carried out in a stretcher. "I…AM…NOT…A…BROOD…MARE!" she bit out as she looked Harm in the eye. She was in a lethally angry mood and it wouldn't be wise to prod the she-wolf any longer. He figured discretion was the better part of valor and backed out the door, shutting it before Mac could make any more heavy objects airborne.


End file.
